1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to a pico network (piconet) for a Near Field Communication (NFC), and more particularly, to a technology that may increase utilization of wireless resources when communication devices in a piconet use directional antennas.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, studies are being actively performed on pico networks (piconets) for a Near Field Communication (NFC). A piconet employs a centralized Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol to increase efficiency of management and communication, and includes a piconet coordinator (PNC) or a network coordinator, and a plurality of communication devices. The plurality of communication devices may form at least one transmitter/receiver pair, namely, a source-destination relationship.
In the piconet, multiple communication links may be used, and the communication links may typically use different frequency resources, or different time resources. However, when different frequency resources or different time resources are used, utilization of wireless resources may be reduced.
Additionally, when each of the communication devices uses a directional antenna, a spatial reuse scheme may be used. In the spatial reuse scheme, at least two transmitter/receiver pairs use the same frequency resource and the same time resource, whereas beams of communication links for the at least two transmitter/receiver pairs are formed in spatially different directions. When the beams of the communication links are individually formed in different directions using the directional antenna, interference between the beams of the communication links may be reduced even though the communication devices use the same wireless resource, namely, the same frequency resource and the same time resource.
A time resource reserved in advance for a predetermined transmitter/receiver pair may be reserved again for another transmitter/receiver pair using the spatial reuse scheme. Such overlapping reservation may increase utilization of time resources, and accordingly, the overall throughput of the piconet may be increased. However, there is a demand to further study how to perform the overlapping reservation, and which protocol is used for the overlapping reservation.